• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She stroked the smooth material of the duster. If it turned out to be waterproof it would be perfect for those unexpected materializations. 'What's this made of?' she asked the stallholder.

'It's too soft to be suede.'

'Skin,' he said.

Bernice snatched her hand away and stared at the man. He grinned back revealing two rows of yellowed needle-sharp teeth.

'Grown in culture of course,' said the man. 'If you like I can take a sample from you now and force-grow a jacket for you while you wait.'

'Ah, no thanks,' said Bernice backing out of the shop. 'I think I'll give it a miss all the same. I was looking for something in brown anyway. Oh, look, there's a woman selling fertility idols, just what I was looking for.' She dragged an amused saRa!qava round the corner and out of sight of the stallholder. 'Yuk,' she said.

'They're very practical,' said saRa!qava.

'What are?'

'Skin jackets. Sort of comforting. I had one made from my mother.'

'I don't want to hear about it,' said Bernice. 'If they don't make money from these stalls, why do they do it?'

'Prestige mostly,' said saRa!qava. 'It's nice to make or design something that somebody else likes enough to take home with them.'

'Like you and your bread?'

'I suppose so.'

They stopped by a stall selling figurines whittled out of hardwood and then varnished. A hand-painted sign hung above the stall. Bernice asked saRa!qava what it said. 'People who are interesting to look at,' she translated. As far as Bernice could tell the sign was only eight characters long. It must be a very economical language, perhaps even ideographic. That could have been why the TARDIS couldn't translate the written form; she remembered it had had trouble with Osiran hieroglyphs. She made a mental note to ask the Doctor about it.

She picked up one of the figurines, admiring the varnished grain, and realized with a shock that it was carved in a likeness of Roz. It was beautifully done, capturing everything from her perpetually disgruntled expression to the stiffness of her backbone. Bernice quickly scanned the crowded table and sure enough saw a matching figurine of Chris.

The woman who ran the stall was almost bouncing up and down with excitement. 'Oh wow,'

she said, 'you're one of the Time Lord's barbarians, aren't you? Do you think it's a good likeness?'

Bernice told her that the likeness was uncanny and the woman seemed almost to explode with pleasure. 'Could you take her one?' She was gushing like a teenybopper at a pop concert. 'She's really popular round here. CiMot's got her face on his Tshirts and he can't fabricate them fast enough. Please take her one – do you think she'll like it?'

Bernice lied and said that Roz would be delighted to find she's been immortalized in driftwood.

The woman asked if she could take a hologram of Bernice as well which she found flattering despite herself. Celebrity at last, she thought. 'Be sure to say that it's Professor Summerfield,' she said.

'Professor,' said the woman. 'What a nice name.' She insisted that Bernice take a Chris Cwej as well and even threw in a fabric carrier bag for her to take the figurines away in.

They spotted their first Roz Forrester T-shirt a few minutes later. It showed her face-on and hitting someone, her fist foreshortened and huge. Bernice didn't need SaRa!qava to translate the legend; it was obviously the local equivalent of EAT MY DAY or MAKE MY SHORTS. Bernice decided there and then to let Chris be the one who told Roz about her new-found status as a cult icon.

It took them two hours to work their way up to the restaurant on the roof of the building. They sat down with stuffed carrier bags clustered around their legs but not as stuffed as they might have been.

She was surprised how much she enjoyed moneyless shopping. Bernice had always assumed that actually having the money, the sense of power that came with being able to afford things, was an integral part of the shopping 'experience'. When she was young and living in the woods